IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Seventeen states sue the Trump Administration over rollback of car emissions standards; Still more new ethics problems for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt; Pakistan sets all-time world heat record for the month of April; Good news for breathers in NYC, China and Hawaii; PLUS: Russia launches world's first floating nuclear power plant... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

NOTE: GNR will be off for a short break next week! Please CLICK HERE TO DONATE so we can afford to come back the week after! Thanks! --- B & D

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Last-Ditch Climate Strategy of Total Retreat Is Failing in America; Scott Pruitt’s top communications official is leaving the EPA; 9 Of 10 Air Pollution Deaths Occur In Developing Countries: WHO Study; Trump’s Solar Tariffs Cause a Scramble in the Industry; Hawaii Approves Bill Banning Sunscreen Believed To Kill Coral Reefs; New Vulnerability Found In Systems Used In Electric, Gas Industries; Earth’s atmosphere just crossed another troubling climate change threshold; Diseases Spread By Ticks, Mosquitoes And Fleas Tripled In Us Since 2004... PLUS: US-British Project Launches To Study The World’s Most Dangerous Glacier... and much, MUCH more! ...

The suit opens yet another front in the ongoing legal battle between Brown and the Trump administration over immigration and environmental policies. The complaint also takes direct aim at EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, whom critics accuse of trying to gut his own department from within.

The preferred course of action would freeze fuel-economy standards at 2020 levels for both cars and light trucks, greatly slowing progress in reducing auto emissions. The proposal also challenges California's authority to impose its own vehicle standards...a decision that could effectively split the United States into two auto markets and set up a messy legal battle.

“Hundreds of millions - and in some cases billions - of dollars in profits isn’t my definition of ‘hardship,’” Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said in statement condemning the CVR waiver. “President Trump promised to support home-grown biofuels, and Administrator Pruitt is breaking that promise.”

HB 2182 HD2 SD2 CD1 makes Hawai‘i the first state in the nation to commit to carbon neutrality by 2045 and making us the nation’s first zero emissions clean economy. Greenhouse Gas Sequestration Task Force aligns with state clean energy and climate goals.

It will take more than a year for the power plant to reach its new home port. The original plan had called for fueling the floating plant before it began that journey, at the shipyard in central St. Petersburg – but that was scuttled last summer, after concerns were raised both in Russia and in countries along the power plant's route through the Baltic Sea and north to the Arctic.

To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate - so every reduction in emissions helps.

Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it's possible for the whole world to run on renewables - we merely lack the "political will." So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.